


then burn the ashes

by tothewillofthepeople



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Feuilly-centric, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 04:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11960025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothewillofthepeople/pseuds/tothewillofthepeople
Summary: Maybe they differ the most in their dispositions, in the way they react to injustice. Where Feuilly bruises, Enjolras bleeds.





	then burn the ashes

**Author's Note:**

> there is a description of a previous brush with homophobia in this story, so homophobic comments and minor violence are referenced. it isn't extensive, but if you need specifics/need it tagged differently just let me know.

_can you water jeanne for me tonight?_

Feuilly doesn’t see the text until he’s on his way home from class. There’s a bus ride and a brisk walk between him and dinner, and he’s settling into the gentle exhaustion that comes from a three-hour lecture, but when he pulls out his phone to play music he finds a single text from Enjolras waiting for him.

The text itself isn’t surprising. Feuilly’s friends are enthusiastic about their various messaging systems. He has a whole group chat with Grantaire, Bahorel, and Bossuet that’s devoted to sending pictures of dogs they see across campus. There’s another one, organized by Courfeyrac, exclusively for planning brunch on the weekends.

But this text… It makes him pause.

 _Where will you be?_ he responds. Then he tucks his phone back in his pocket and keeps reading the slim paperback he had tucked in his coat, some ridiculous sci-fi novel from the eighties that Combeferre thought he would like. He’s careful to keep one eye on the window, watching the various stops so he doesn’t miss his own.

It’s cold when he finally steps out onto the pavement. Feuilly tucks his scarf more firmly around his neck and sets off towards his dorm. There are a few fledgling stars breaking through the cloudy November sky, but Feuilly doesn’t know their names. He wishes he could keep reading his book while he walks, but he doesn’t have any gloves and the air is too chilly for his hands to be out, unprotected. His ears are so cold that they burn.

He checks his phone again when he reaches his dorm. No reply. Feuilly frowns and hesitates on the steps of the building. Enjolras’s place is on the other side of campus. Feuilly has crashed there several times, after parties or study sessions that ran late into bitterly cold evenings. He knows how to get in without a key. 

It’s just a plant.

But Enjolras had asked specifically…

Feuilly rolls his eyes and turns back around. Sometimes he wishes he was a little less devoted to his friends, a little less willing to walk to the ends of the earth (or the other side of campus) for them. But it’s a selfish want, and an untrue one. Feuilly loves his friends. He also knows, deeply and intrinsically, that they are just as devoted to him.

(Even beyond that, of course, lies the realm of what he would do for Enjolras specifically. What he hopes Enjolras would do for him, too. He’s never had to test it but _god, god_ he would do anything. Walking over hot coals would be a pleasure.)

He lets himself into Enjolras’s apartment twenty minutes later.

All the lights are off. The space is full of shadows. Feuilly flips on a lamp even though he doesn’t really need to; he knows this space well, he can navigate in the dark. 

Enjolras’s little plant is sitting on his desk. Right above it, on the wall, is a post-it note that says _jeudi!!!_

(One time Grantaire, upon seeing the sign, had wrinkled his nose and asked Enjolras why he had named his succulent Jeudi.

“That’s not her name,” Enjolras had said calmly. “It’s a reminder to water her on Thursdays. Her name is Jeanne d’Arc.”

Grantaire had immediately taken to referring to the plant as Jeudi d’Arc whenever possible.)

“Hello, Jeanne,” Feuilly mutters, picking up the little pot that the succulent sits in and carrying it to the kitchen. “Do _you_ know where Enjolras is?”

Then he feels foolish, for talking to a plant. He waters it carefully in the sink and then carries it back out to Enjolras’s desk.

It’s the only thing he can do. No idea where Enjolras is, or when he’ll come back. If he’s in trouble. If he’s hurt.

If he was in trouble, he would have said something. Feuilly can’t quite convince himself that it’s true. He tries to ease the hum of discomfort in his chest and doesn’t quite manage it.

He sighs and looks around Enjolras’s apartment. Castle. Complex. Home. Can student housing ever be a home? Feuilly stands at the desk for a while, running his fingers along the smooth wood. He’s no stranger to swapping houses, moving out of spaces just when it seemed he had fully moved in. To him, the shuffling between dorms each year is just an extension of the journeys between foster homes he lived in as a child. Places, impermanent. _Home_ meaning something other than a location.

To the best of his knowledge, though, Enjolras lived in the same place the whole time he grew up, and it shows. He’s quick to make a space his own, quick to settle into it, pulling the corners around himself to suit him better. There’s nothing in the apartment to suggest that he’ll ever have to leave, even though Feuilly knows, he _knows_ that Enjolras will be somewhere else at the start of the next school year. 

There’s a constant itch under Feuilly’s skin. A constant need to be able to pack himself up at the drop of a hat, flee in the middle of the night if he must. If Enjolras’s room is austere, Feuilly’s own is just depressing. No decorations on the walls, no curtains. More books than furniture.

He feels a bit like a voyeur as he wanders over to Enjolras’s bookshelf. He’s been here before, but never alone. He’s perused this very bookshelf, but never with more than passing interest. Looking at it now, he finds himself smiling at the very clear portrait the books paint of their owner.

Enjolras is hard on his books. He writes, he underlines, he folds over the pages. Books on history, philosophy. Biographies, a French-English dictionary. Scattered books of poetry (most likely from Prouvaire). A few books of piano music, laying horizontal across everything else– Feuilly will never forget the day he discovered that rough-and-tumble Enjolras had been classically trained as a pianist.

There are also library books tucked in with everything else, almost certainly overdue. Enjolras doesn’t write in library books, which is a blessing. Combeferre would kill him if he did. (Combeferre did almost kill him, once, when Enjolras was determined to burn a library book with wretched rhetoric. “You can’t burn a library book,” Combeferre had insisted furiously. He’d still had to almost tackle Enjolras to save the book from being held over the open flame of the gas stove.)

Feuilly lays one finger on a book about Edward Snowden (Enjolras loves whistleblower stories) before he looks away from the bookshelf.

Enjolras’s bed is in the corner, fastidiously made. Feuilly gives it a long look. He’s seen Enjolras wake up before, sleep-ruffled and quiet. He’s seen him wake up after sleeping on one of their friends’ couches, after sleeping between the shelves in the library. But he’s never seen Enjolras wake up in his own bed. He doesn’t know if anyone ever has.

Feuilly bites his lip and looks away. He doesn’t need to be thinking about anyone in Enjolras’s bed. The thought will drive him mad. He doesn’t need to think about someone pressing Enjolras down into the soft white sheets, pulling his shirt up over his head–– fuck. _Fuck._

He goes back into the kitchen to get himself a drink of water.

The calendar in the kitchen– the paintings of John Singer Sargent, a gift from Enjolras’s parents– is still on October. Feuilly takes a moment to flip it to November and hang it back on the wall, smiling fondly at this one scrap of proof of Enjolras’s absentmindedness. 

Enjolras lives alone, unlike almost everyone else in their extended friend group. Feuilly does too, technically, but he’s an RA in his dorm. He may have his own room but he shares a hall with a dozen freshman and sophomores. Enjolras has his whole apartment to himself. And quiet neighbors, which Feuilly hates him for a little bit. One person should have a limited amount of luck, in his opinion, and Enjolras seems to have a surplus. Even though he has no one to fix his calendar for him, or water his plant when he’s gone.

Feuilly doesn’t even know who Enjolras would want in that space. He’s never been able to picture what such a person would look like– he doesn’t even know where to start. Enjolras defends LGBT rights with the fervor of someone who falls under the labels himself but Feuilly actually has no idea how the blond identifies, if he’s gay or bi or if his gender is the thing. Enjolras doesn’t talk about his personal life. Everything Feuilly knows was very carefully gleaned. But he doesn’t know this one thing, this one fact that would let him know if he should back off, if all his hopes are in vain.

He tries to be so careful. But it’s hard, when he doesn’t know what Enjolras wants. Enjolras will get close to him, trust him, wait for him, and Feuilly swallows all of it and wonders what it means. God, one time Enjolras had told him _You’re the best person I know,_ perfectly earnest, and Feuilly has never forgotten it. But Enjolras loves all his friends. What makes Feuilly special?

He tips sideways onto the couch. If Enjolras isn’t back within the hour he’ll just go home, get ready for bed, and try not to worry. Everything will be fine. Enjolras is fine.

Feuilly doesn’t manage to convince himself, but he does manage to fall asleep. It’s an accident. Enjolras’s couch is deceptively soft, and Feuilly is more tired than he realized.

He doesn’t dream.

*

Feuilly’s first thought upon waking up, far too early and fairly disoriented, is _oh fuck._

He didn’t eat dinner, he didn’t do his history reading, he _fell asleep on Enjolras’s couch,_ jesus, who _does_ that? He should leave. He sits up and prepares to do just that.

Then he hears the key in the lock.

The door opens sharply, because Enjolras does everything with intensity, even coming home. He’s halfway through the door way before he notices Feuilly on his couch and freezes. Feuilly stares back. The sunlight on the windowsill is the pale color of dawn.

Enjolras’s face is unmarked, which is almost a surprise. Feuilly can’t count the number of times he’s run across Enjolras with a black eye, or even with a broken nose. But Enjolras looks fine, if exhausted. He’s slightly out of breath, no doubt from running up the stairs. He always runs up the stairs. If he ever ascended a set of steps one at a time like a normal person, Feuilly would assume he was dying.

“What happened?” Feuilly asks softly.

Enjolras looks like he hadn’t caught a wink of sleep. His hair, short as it is, still seems rumpled. The holes in the knees of his jeans aren’t new, but something about his appearance as a whole makes Feuilly think that Enjolras was caught in some dastardly thing that kept him up all night. He still manages to look entirely superlative. He’s always the most interesting thing in the room. Maybe that’s why his apartment is so plain. Anything else would be overwhelming, with the addition of his frenetic energy and bright gold hair. He needs a canvas to shine against.

“Good morning,” Enjolras says. “Why are you here?”

Oh, Feuilly loves him terribly.

“I fell asleep by accident,” Feuilly says, standing up. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Enjolras shuts the door behind him. He doesn’t look fine. He looks two seconds away from falling to pieces.

“Where were you?” Feuilly asks.

Enjolras sighs. He doesn’t look at Feuilly, he’s staring out the window as he takes off his shoes. But he says, “Police station.”

Bad. Bad bad bad. “Why were you at the police station?”

“I got arrested.”

Oh, _hell._ “What for?” Feuilly asks sharply. “What happened? Jesus, Enjolras, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was in the back of a cop car, it was hardly the time for long explanatory texts.”

“Wait, didn’t they confiscate your phone?”

“Not until we got to the station,” Enjolras says with a frown. “And I know how to text with handcuffs on.”

Feuilly puts one hand to his eyes. “You were going to jail,” he clarifies, “and you only told me to water your succulent.”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“A _succulent.”_

“I didn’t want it to die, it was a gift from Prouvaire.”

“It’s a succulent, Enjolras! They survive in the desert! With no water!”

Enjolras presses his mouth into one uncomfortable line. His fair eyebrows are low. “I wanted…” he starts, and then looks away.

“What, Enjolras?”

“I texted Combeferre, too,” Enjolras says. “That I had been arrested.”

Feuilly narrows his eyes. The words that Enjolras doesn’t say are always more important than the ones he does. Enjolras is a study in emotional denial and restraint. He never says what he wants. Feuilly thinks for a moment and then says, “Did you text anyone else?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Enjolras doesn’t look uncomfortable, exactly, but there’s something he’s dancing around. Feuilly crosses his arms and says, “Why did you text _me?”_

Enjolras stares at him. 

Feuilly sighs and lets his shoulders slump. “What happened?”

“I got in a fight.”

“With who?”

“I didn’t know their names.”

“Jesus Christ, Enjolras, talking to you is like pulling teeth!” Enjolras takes a step back from Feuilly’s ire, but he doesn’t look sorry. “Just tell me what happened,” Feuilly says, more pleading.

“I was walking home from the library,” Enjolras says, finally, slowly. “A pair of guys, I assume they were from some fraternity, called me an inventive slur as I walked by.” He pauses to look down at himself and arches one disdainful eyebrow. “I’m not exactly sure what made them say anything. Do I look gay to you today?”

Feuilly puts his head in his hands. Enjolras, seeing this, continues.

“They kept antagonizing me as I walked past, and I… It’s not in my nature to let things go.”

Feuilly can’t decide if he wants to laugh or scream. “I do know that about you,” he manages.

“I threw the first punch, which is why I’m in the most trouble.” He frowns again. “I didn’t realize there was a cop at the end of the street.”

An instance of bad luck. Feuilly feels terrible as soon as he thinks of it. “What did they even say to you?” he asks. Enjolras has more patience than anyone he knows.

A crease appears in between Enjolras’s eyebrows, but he doesn’t back down. “I believe it was some vague insinuation about how I like to be fucked,” he replies icily. Every word is sharp and Feuilly looks away, he can’t look Enjolras in the eyes at that, he can’t stand still and hear it as though he had been there when the words were first uttered. “They continued in that vein for some time, and then one of them shoved me.”

“Did they hurt you?” Feuilly has to clear his throat before he can say it.

Enjolras shakes his head. “My wrists…” he says, making a vague motion with one hand. “Just from the handcuffs. It’s fine.”

“Let me see.” Inwardly, Feuilly is still struggling between the twin desires of laughter and panic. Enjolras, the prettiest boy on campus, walking out of a fight with two boys unscathed is the most incredible thing he’s heard all week, and it’s more incredible because it’s entirely unsurprising. Feuilly has seen Enjolras in a fight before. Half of his beauty comes from violence.

Enjolras steps closer and begins undoing the buttons at his wrists. He’s close enough that the tip of his right shoe is pressed against the side of Feuilly’s left. They’re almost the same height. Feuilly’s shoulders are broader, his hands rougher and more calloused. But it can’t be said that Enjolras is soft in comparison; he isn’t made of glass or porcelain. The same type of stone, but less weathered by the rain. 

Maybe they differ the most in their dispositions, in the way they react to injustice. Where Feuilly bruises, Enjolras bleeds.

The skin of his wrist is rubbed raw. Feuilly presses his fingers to Enjolras’s pulse point and notes how cold Enjolras’s hands are. The knuckles are bruised, something Feuilly didn’t notice at first and Enjolras didn’t mention. “Do you have anything to put on this?” he asks.

“I should.”

Feuilly glances up. To his surprise, Enjolras’s eyes are closed. He’s standing very still, hardly breathing, but his pulse is strong beneath Feuilly’s thumb. The line of his mouth is tense. Feuilly feels like he should avert his gaze.

Enjolras’s other hand is pressed to his stomach. Feuilly reaches out and wraps his hand around the wrist, sliding his fingers around the first hand at the same time so that he’s holding them both in a gentle grip. He doesn’t press, but Enjolras’s eyes open nonetheless.

“You don’t avoid pain the way most people do,” Feuilly says.

Enjolras narrows his eyes.

“It would have hurt, to text with your hands in cuffs,” Feuilly clarifies. “You didn’t have to. You didn’t need to text me, and you could have called Combeferre once you got to the station. Why do you do that?”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” Enjolras says again.

“Combeferre would have told us where you were, if you were gone long enough for us to notice,” Feuilly says. “The only reason I know that you weren’t home last night is because you texted me. Why did you––?”

“I don’t know, okay?” Enjolras says, sharply. He takes a step back, pulling his wrists out of Feuilly’s grip. “I needed, I needed to tell you _something,_ but I didn’t know what, and it was the first thing that came to mind.”

His shoulders are hunched over, defensive, and Feuilly abruptly feels sorry. Enjolras has probably spent all night being needled and battered by the police, he doesn’t need Feuilly digging around in his head on top of all that. He needs comfort, not interrogation. “I’m sorry,” Feuilly says quietly.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Let’s get something for your wrists.”

“They’re fine.”

“Please.”

Their eyes meet again. Then Enjolras stalks past Feuilly into the bathroom. “I have to appear in court,” he says, loud enough for Feuilly to hear him through the doorway. “Yes, they read me my rights, yes, they have my photograph and my fingerprints, yes, I was given a phone call. I called my parents, not Combeferre. I was released OR, so I didn’t have to pay bail. I’m probably looking at community service, a fine if the judge is feeling stern. So stop looking at me like I’ve ruined something.” The words are clipped and precise, almost as brusque as the way he pulls out a bottle of something to rub on his wrists and pops off the cap.

“I don’t think you’ve ruined anything,” Feuilly says, nonplussed. He leans against the doorway of the bathroom and tries to meet Enjolras’s eyes in the mirror.

Enjolras throws the bottle cap at him. “Then stop looking so disappointed in me.”

“I’m not disappointed in you. Is that what you’re worried about?”

Enjolras keeps his head down, focusing on his wrists. His back is to Feuilly.

“Enjolras.”

No reply.

“Enjolras, please.”

“I never know what to say to you,” Enjolras says quietly. He sounds angry– at himself, not at Feuilly. The admission is almost startling. His hands look like they’re shaking.

Feuilly takes a step into the bathroom and puts his palm on Enjolras’s shoulder. Enjolras looks up and finally meets Feuilly’s gaze in the bathroom mirror. He looks exhausted and wired, all at once. Equally able to fall into bed and sleep deeply or run back out and fight a man in the street. The duality of Enjolras, Feuilly thinks wryly. At once precious and violent. 

“What do you need, Enjolras?” Feuilly asks softly.

“I don’t need anything.”

“Okay. Then what do you _want?”_

Enjolras’s lips part, barely. Feuilly watches in the mirror as Enjolras closes his eyes and drops his head. Then he raises his fingers and rests them on the hand Feuilly still has on his shoulder.

“I don’t know,” Enjolras says quietly. “This morning all I wanted was to come home.” He takes a deep breath. “I hoped you would be here.” He bites his lip, as though he’s about to say something else, but then he doesn’t.

Feuilly pulls Enjolras’s shoulder so that the blond turns until they’re facing each other. “You could have just asked me to come over,” Feuilly says. He brushes his thumb over Enjolras’s collarbone, still covered by his soft blue shirt. “I would have come. I would have come for you in jail, even. Would have punched out an officer to get thrown in with you, if you wanted.” He drops his hands and shrugs. “Anything you want. Anything you need. Even if it’s just someone to water your ridiculous plant.”

Enjolras looks at him hard for one moment. Very slowly, he raises his own hand and puts it on the back of Feuilly’s neck. Then he takes one careful step forward. It’s almost too much to bear. Feuilly hesitates, aching and unsure, before he drops his chin just enough so their foreheads are pressed together, close and warm. 

“What do _you_ want?” Enjolras asks roughly. It’s almost a dare, but his eyes are closed again.

Feuilly thinks about it for one terrifying moment. Then he kisses Enjolras right on his red-bitten mouth.

Enjolras makes a sharp sound and then presses closer. When Feuilly moves back, after one impossibly soft second, Enjolras’s expression breaks. But he pulls Feuilly in by the back of his neck and kisses him again. And then again. Soft and slow and sweet. Feuilly settles his hands on Enjolras’s hipbones and leans back against the doorframe of the bathroom, content to let Enjolras do whatever he wants. For as long as he wants. _God._

He never thought… well, he didn’t expect this. To have his arms full of Enjolras, tired and intense and doing his level best to drive Feuilly out of his goddamn _mind,_ jesus, he _bites._ Enjolras, for all his warmth and charisma, is an undeniably private person. Feuilly still doesn’t know if he’s ever dated anyone, ever brought someone back to his apartment and that soft bed in the middle of the night. But Feuilly is here, now, in the cold morning, and Enjolras is making a low sound of _want_ right into his mouth.

“You’re a menace,” Feuilly says, tracing the words along Enjolras’s jaw. “I never know what to do with you.”

“I didn’t know,” Enjolras says. “I didn’t know you– how long have you––?”

Enjolras, orator extraordinaire, always at a loss for words when it comes to matters of the heart. Feuilly grins and drops his forehead to rest on Enjolras’s shoulder. “I don’t know,” he says. “Always. The first time I heard you speak. The first time I saw you wearing that red coat. The first time you stole my cigarettes.”

“They’re bad for you.”

“If you hadn’t taken them home and smoked the whole pack maybe I would heed your advice.”

“I didn’t mean to. I was stressed.”

“Menace,” Feuilly repeats, and then occupies himself for a short while with setting teeth marks into the skin above Enjolras’s collarbone. 

Enjolras’s breath is strong and unsteady; his eyelids have drifted closed again. “I hoped you would– ah– be here,” he says after a minute, and Feuilly looks up. “It was a ridiculous thing to want– why would you be? But then you were.” He bites his bottom lip. Feuilly wants to do that for him, but he holds back. “I didn’t… It was fast. I was in the car, and I told Combeferre, and then… I wanted to text you. I didn’t know what to say. Combeferre knew where I was going, I didn’t need to frighten anyone else, but I wanted…” He makes a frustrated noise and opens his eyes.

“You wanted me to be here,” Feuilly says quietly. “You sent me over here on the off chance that I’d stay.”

“It sounds like a coherent plan, when you say it like that.”

“I’ve never known you to make an incoherent one.”

“I do,” Enjolras insists, “I do, when it comes to you, I never know what I’m doing.” He gets his hands up on Feuilly’s jaw and pulls him in to kiss him again.

“You always seem like you do,” Feuilly says, once he’s pulled back so he can breathe. “I find you perfectly inscrutable.” He drops a kiss on Enjolras’s forehead. He can’t believe he’s allowed to do that, so he does it again. 

“Feuilly,” Enjolras says. His voice is quiet and strong.

“You need to sleep,” Feuilly says.

Enjolras puts his hands on Feuilly’s shoulders, rests his thumbs on the notch at the base of Feuilly’s throat. “Will you stay?”

It’s Friday. Feuilly has class at noon, but the angle of sunlight through the window tells him that noon is several hours away. He can stay. For a little while. If he leaves, he might convince himself that this is something he imagined. A lecture hall daydream; a wistful painting done in watercolor. 

He needs to eat. He also needs to sleep somewhere that won’t fucking murder his back like Enjolras’s couch did, for the love of god. But he can stay.

Enjolras is still watching him, still running his thumb up the side of Feuilly’s neck. As intent as he always is. For exactly one moment, Feuilly is afraid. He loves easily and deeply, he knows that about himself. And Enjolras does everything with fire and color and wonder and _jesus,_ what in the world will he be like? Feuilly will be burned alive. 

It’s still dawn. They have time to talk, time for Enjolras to sleep and for Feuilly to convince himself that this is real, he’s allowed to have it. Time to talk about Enjolras’s wrists and knuckles and the dreadful words he had endured.

Enjolras lowers his eyes. He frowns, and shifts on his feet, and then he says, very quietly, “Please.”

He’s never looked more tired, here in the pale white glow of the dawn, and Feuilly still loves him horribly for it.

Feuilly takes a breath and then feels his face break into something like a smile.

“I’ll stay,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr i am [kvothes](http://kvothes.tumblr.com/tagged/x).


End file.
